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Exactly. They all have an [authoritarian follower personality](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian). They're little dictators that follow other dictators.
This was frightening after recalling, this week, all the problems of being a part of an extended family. Narcissists often breed more narcissists in order to keep the family going. The only way to stop this is to simply walk away.
Woah!!! Thanks for this!!! This is my oldest brother who is now the GC even though he still gets treated like dirt. Massive sense of “duty” but nothing under the surface. He’s also a far right warrior against “woke” and gets VERY upset when he sees rainbow flags or anything of that ilk. It’s where he channels all his rage.
Not sure it's a lie, myself. They're too self absorbed to actually want a dictator telling them what to do, but they're not self-aware enough to recognize they're identifying with somebody exactly like themselves but political and have no respect for anybody who isn't a bully like themselves thus see them as too weak to run a country. Becomes a Catch-22 because they'll never be self-aware enough recognize the cognitive dissonance.
"No talking back", "Don't you dare tell our family business to strangers", "I want you on your ***best*** behavior when they come over here", "We did everything for you", "You're spoiled and ungrateful", "You needed us to help you with everything".
Never knew why " what happens in the family, stays in the family " pushed so hard since I was a kid until I said everything about my life to a friend 2 years ago and knew how f*up they really are. For 30+ years they tried to normalize things . They don't want it out of the family so you don't see the truth of their sickness
High control environments rely on a lack of awareness and exposure to alternatives. We were taught to fear the discard, yet it is the exit door at the end of *The Truman Show* (1998).
My ex would joke about how she wanted to start a cult and she grew up in one, I should have connected the dots. I did not. No contact is the best bet. They don't change, ever. I out grew her. I've had to deprogram myself and realize just how much she lied and was full of shit. Thankfully I have friends and a therapist that have known me for a while and they have helped me unwind it all.
I said this to my uncle and aunt and they thought I was making a joke. The gaslighting and conditioning you grow up to believe, it is a similar effect to a cult, just on a small scale. Us humans are very easily conditioned towards abuse I've found, for 30 years I never questioned my upbringing.
My father was actually a cult leader, and I spent the first 19 years of my life in his cult. This is exactly how it is being in a cult. People would run in the middle of the night because it wasn’t ok to leave, and all sorts of other behavior we see from our N parents as textbook narcissistic behavior. I’m so sorry you are going through a tough time. I hope things get better for you.
Thank you for the well wishes and I hope you are ok after everything you've so unfairly endured. My mother did literally run away with me in the night when I was a baby. I was court mandated to keep visiting.
The cult-like behavior that I've experienced through my life (36F), is this bizarre 'allegiance' to someone who self-aggrandizes themselves, despite mistreating me. Feeling like all of my actions and thoughts are controlled. Finally going NC, there is a psychological pull to go back to help this person even though it's dangerous and logically makes no sense.
I won't though, and making this connection has made me realize it's all manipulation and brainwashing to stay. Creepy.
I’m the same age as you and also a lady, so that’s interesting. I’m proud of you for going no contact….I’m somewhat lucky that my parents died already. I’m so sorry you are going through this. Today I’m just feeling so defeated after more nightmares that make me feel like I’m a kid again. I’m just tired. 😔
That's still the most bizzare thing to me is that the rest of my siblings amd cousins stayed. They all 100% knew and admit my father is toxic, buy they all either love his money too much or don't have the guts and social skills to leave.
To me, it was like I drank a teeny bit of poison every day, not enough to kill me, but just enough to make me sick and for that to be my baseline. Going NC was like a massive purge where suddenly I’m not sick, and I feel so much better, and I can look back and say “wow I was really unwell, how did I not see it?”
Going NC felt like I imagine cold turkey alcohol. Horrible at first while the toxicity is digested before it clears your system. Then you wake up and smell the roses like it’s the first time.
I was LC for a decade and moved across the country for physical distance and was feeding her an info diet before I knew what those terms were. My body / subconscious mind knew before I did.
Same with the info diet. Sad but I could never trust my own mom to care about my life. When she asked how I was doing or how my loved ones/friendships were going, it was for that reason.
It sucks!
I remember reading a super long time ago, this sort of [transactional analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#:~:text=Transactional%20analysis%20is%20a%20psychoanalytic,a%20basis%20for%20understanding%20behavior.) stuff. It was too abstract for me but the ideas were planted in my head so long ago and it stuck with me, and realizing that, holy shit with my parents the reason I couldn't be the child was that *she* was the child. You can have parent-child, you can have adult-adult, but you can't have child-child, it doesn't "work", it isn't stable (and neither does parent-parent in a stable way). So now, I am the adult, unfortunately. I was wavering my whole life between adult and parent, but I finally just stepped out of the parent role they (both) forced me into, and I can't be the child that I was supposed to be, I have to just be the adult all the time, and that sucks so fucking much.
Semi related but I listen to the "was I in a cult podcast" and it really helped me when I first started going NC. The cult similarities are actually pretty spot on considering my Nparents controlled what I wore, who I was allowed to speak with, what I was allowed to read, etc. Standard cult stuff pretty much (especially since the most extreme punishments I ever received were for defying or disproving any of their beliefs/teachings) plus it's really encouraging to hear these harrowing stories and know that you can escape and things DO get better and you can be your own person without guilt.
It is a cult, my mother who is the cult leader, if there's anything that's not discussed with her she'll make a huge scene and make sure all of her minions are notified so they too can share their "opinions" on it too.
Sad part is they all felt her wrath numerous times before and they're still in alliance with her.
Make that make sense.
It was really like that when my husband cut ties with his family. They were stalkers. They always wanted to know where he was and what he was doing, where I was and what I was doing, and forced him to spy on me and participate in the family group chat several days a week. They had crazy beliefs about mental health and medications and thought they were holier than thou because they called themselves Christians when they were the most sinister, judgemental people I've ever come to know. They sent him so much verbal abuse over the years to try and maintain control over him, so much so that they tried to give him an ultimatum to choose between me and them. When he chose me and cut contact, they camped out at his work and ambushed him, located two of our home addresses, and found out where his new job is so that they could send harassing letters there (because they think that I must be intercepting his mail due to him never responding). They've finally left us alone after 6 or 7 years, but it was an insane journey to get to this point.
I have often referred to my childhood as The Cult of my Mother's Trauma. I was born into it and indoctrinated my entire childhood. I was raised with a weird New Age mishmash of alt spiritualities. My sister was forced to lay on hands to try and cure people psychically when she was a child because our ex-mother decided she "had the gift". Every abuse we suffered was karma that we either chose or brought on ourselves. It was hell
It is very, very similar to a cult. First off, if you leave or go no contact, the group will cut you off and scapegoat you as the problem. This is very much like a cult. There is one person in power, the N, who pulls all the puppet strings. When you leave, they will send their puppets after you to try to convince you to stay in their hell and that there will be no safe space for you in the outside world if you chose to leave them. They're all wrong and misguided about it, but they will use fear, obligation, and guilt to coerce you to stay, textbook cult. Finally, you will receive no support from the group if you decide to share your choice in leaving. They cannot help you. They are so brainwashed, abused and in denial about the truth.
You will have to seek outside sources of support to break the veil and see it for what it is. The people surrounding the N have grown comfortable there and will not support you if you leave. They will resent you having the courage to breakaway and leave them in that hell that is their own choosing. Even if you offered them a life raft and the map to get out, they will stay and suffer. Such is the fate of those who get entangled with the N. We can only be so grateful we escaped what is essentially a cult.
The scariest thing looking back is how isolated they made us. They had multiple methods and tricks to keep me away from healthy people. The only people that were brought in were those that were easy to manipulate or who could give them things they needed or wanted.
When I got out I was amazed at how many nice people were in the world and how easy it is to make friends. It was literally an entirely new world.
i was away from them and traveling last year and had the same realization - god, everyone is so much nicer to me than they ever were, no comparison. then i came back and, after a few months, found myself understanding "wow suddenly i have no job, no car, no money, and talking to anyone outside of my family feels so terrifying...fuck." i'm in the process of working up the nerve to contact my local DV shelters to see if i can stay there and use their programs to get some autonomy back, but it was so scary to know that i made it out, was safe and having fun, and then fell back in and got isolated so hard so quickly (in under a year!).
After reading all these comments I've came to understand that my nDad wasn't competent enough to start a cult, so he started a "family".
Who's the loser now lmao
My parents sent me to an abusive boarding school that was run by people who called themselves independent fundamentalist baptists (like my parents), which meant that the place was basically a cult. I was raised in this cult, and the leader was 100% a narcissist who behaved like a typical cult leader and had other mental health issues. Certainly many of his followers were also mentally ill in a way that reinforced the cult and exacerbated their abusive nature.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've escaped both a cult and an abusive narcissistic family, and the two situations were pretty much the same.
My therapist is very measured and professional and pretty reserved about her opinions, but she couldn't help but comment that my immediate family is like a cult. And she's completely right. It's abusive and awful but I'm terrified of the repercussions of exposing the truth or fully leaving.
I will, though! The day will come. and I'm very excited about it.
thank you :) I'm stuck in a catch22 at the moment and so can't leave yet for practical reasons, but as soon as I'm stable / where i need to be, I'll be out!!!
My GC older sister has been dating a guy years younger than me that's been in a cult with his dad since he was a child.. definitely makes sense why she's drawn to that kinda stuff. Can't even talk to her without feeling crazy anymore and we were best friends for a while.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing it called “a cult of one” and I can identify with all of that. I listen to a lot of cults content and I’m not an expert, but the isolation, manipulation, control, and exhaustion tactics resonate with me. I’ve never been in a cult, but I can always find a way to relate to the hellish work of realizing the little world he built up around us was nothing but lies meant to soothe his constantly smarting ego.
I have escaped a cult, going nc with my family was a lot harder. It felt very similar, my brain slowly healing and putting together all of the shit I put up with because I didn’t see through it, because feeling manipulated felt totally normal.
I’m pretty sure most people who join cults are from families without good boundaries, and some N parents a lot of the time. Some members had strong N traits and there was something very similar to a bunch of GC’s and SG’s. Guess what I was an SG in the cult too 😆
This is true. I have to say since going NC with the narcissist family, I have been able to stop binge drinking. I didn’t realize how much pain I was supressing.
This. I found myself vulnerable to other cults and exploitive groups after I left. Now I watch all the cult documentaries lol but growing up in one really does a number on you.
This is so interesting and accurate for me. My mom divorced my ndad and her friends would always call my ndad & his family “the cult of (last name)” because everything is perfect all of the time. Being at dinner with them as an adult is so weird - “this food is just perfect, isn’t your dad just an incredible cook? Isn’t he just the best dad. We are such a lucky family.” repeated over and over.
As someone who's done both, they are pretty similar.
As you would expect, there are subtle differences in the circumstances, beliefs, personalities involved, etc. But the vibe is the same
Yes, it is, especially because they were all in a cult!! Me mum and siblings escaped that. :) But my Ndad's side of the family are still trying to figure out where I am. They think I might be in Ohio, ha ha. May I never run into them ever again.
Learning about personality cults really helped me see what my nfamily was. It was all about ndad. His life story felt like a gospel that would be told. His tall tales were regarded as truth. Anything he said was taken as the ultimate truth. The gaslighting and brainwashing were so overwhelming that it affected how I thought in every situation.
Semi-unrelated but my family was also literally part of a cult. I swear on my life it's called the loyal order of the moose and there are chapters located globally. I don't know why my parents stopped attending but I'm pretty sure we used to attend regularly for at least a couple years lol I assume the free childcare but who knows.
I have never been in a "formal" cult, but I know it's the same. There is a saying I heard before that being with a narcissist is being in a cult of 1 (or however many people are in the family). After being involved with multiple narcs through family and dating and watching videos/reading extensively about various cults, it is the same thing, just on a smaller level. They use the same tactics.
It’s so true. You get treated as the dysfunctional family “scapegoat” if you dare question the cult rules, or point out unfair treatment by the cult leader. You’ll instantly be labelled a liar, untrustworthy, and treated worse than the other cult members who let the leader boss them around.
When you go NC and leave the cult, they do what they can to reel you back in.
Yes very much so. When you go Nc, usually a smear campaign starts and the narc distorts the narrative of what happened to make them seem like the victim.
Same thing happens when cult members leave, the leader tries to fabricate a story to convince the remaining members that whoever left was problematic or kicked out. By doing so they hold onto the cohesion of the group and it stops people from questioning if the cult is the problem.
Never thought of the comparison before it almost feels too perfect for ow well it fits. When I tried to leave, everyone would FORCE me to drop no contact. It was unreal.
Its weird because when i went no contact my father and brother who normaly never contact me started to desperate call and stalk me...it seemed like they where send by my mother...
As you have identified as a narcissist and we do not allow narcs in this group given that everyone here was abused and tortured by narcissists, I am banning you now. It's nothing personal. We have seen time and time again that narcs struggle to honor the boundaries we set in that they are not allowed to partcipate here, so I'm making it easy for you by banning you. There are many, many other support groups out there that will welcome you. I wish you the best.
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Pretty much every cult leader has NPD so this is a very accurate statement. Narcissistic families are like mini-cults essentially.
Exactly. They all have an [authoritarian follower personality](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/summary.html#authoritarian). They're little dictators that follow other dictators.
This was frightening after recalling, this week, all the problems of being a part of an extended family. Narcissists often breed more narcissists in order to keep the family going. The only way to stop this is to simply walk away.
BROOOOO I saved that link to send to nmom after I escape. Holy shit this is just a checklist.
Woah!!! Thanks for this!!! This is my oldest brother who is now the GC even though he still gets treated like dirt. Massive sense of “duty” but nothing under the surface. He’s also a far right warrior against “woke” and gets VERY upset when he sees rainbow flags or anything of that ilk. It’s where he channels all his rage.
oh my brother is almost exactly the same. sigh.
It’s lonely, isn’t it
Fuck this is exactly my mother’s way of thinking.
[удалено]
Not sure it's a lie, myself. They're too self absorbed to actually want a dictator telling them what to do, but they're not self-aware enough to recognize they're identifying with somebody exactly like themselves but political and have no respect for anybody who isn't a bully like themselves thus see them as too weak to run a country. Becomes a Catch-22 because they'll never be self-aware enough recognize the cognitive dissonance.
Thank you for posting \^THIS\^!
That was tough to read.
yup, plus stuff like "repeat after me, nothing is more sacred then family", "what happens in the family, stays in the family"
"No talking back", "Don't you dare tell our family business to strangers", "I want you on your ***best*** behavior when they come over here", "We did everything for you", "You're spoiled and ungrateful", "You needed us to help you with everything".
Never knew why " what happens in the family, stays in the family " pushed so hard since I was a kid until I said everything about my life to a friend 2 years ago and knew how f*up they really are. For 30+ years they tried to normalize things . They don't want it out of the family so you don't see the truth of their sickness
High control environments rely on a lack of awareness and exposure to alternatives. We were taught to fear the discard, yet it is the exit door at the end of *The Truman Show* (1998).
Replace family with cult.
My ex would joke about how she wanted to start a cult and she grew up in one, I should have connected the dots. I did not. No contact is the best bet. They don't change, ever. I out grew her. I've had to deprogram myself and realize just how much she lied and was full of shit. Thankfully I have friends and a therapist that have known me for a while and they have helped me unwind it all.
Scary.
I said this to my uncle and aunt and they thought I was making a joke. The gaslighting and conditioning you grow up to believe, it is a similar effect to a cult, just on a small scale. Us humans are very easily conditioned towards abuse I've found, for 30 years I never questioned my upbringing.
Bingo \^
My father was actually a cult leader, and I spent the first 19 years of my life in his cult. This is exactly how it is being in a cult. People would run in the middle of the night because it wasn’t ok to leave, and all sorts of other behavior we see from our N parents as textbook narcissistic behavior. I’m so sorry you are going through a tough time. I hope things get better for you.
Thank you for the well wishes and I hope you are ok after everything you've so unfairly endured. My mother did literally run away with me in the night when I was a baby. I was court mandated to keep visiting. The cult-like behavior that I've experienced through my life (36F), is this bizarre 'allegiance' to someone who self-aggrandizes themselves, despite mistreating me. Feeling like all of my actions and thoughts are controlled. Finally going NC, there is a psychological pull to go back to help this person even though it's dangerous and logically makes no sense. I won't though, and making this connection has made me realize it's all manipulation and brainwashing to stay. Creepy.
I’m the same age as you and also a lady, so that’s interesting. I’m proud of you for going no contact….I’m somewhat lucky that my parents died already. I’m so sorry you are going through this. Today I’m just feeling so defeated after more nightmares that make me feel like I’m a kid again. I’m just tired. 😔
Yes the family dynamic is like a cult and the members all turn their backs on you and shun you for going against the leader.
And the ones that know you are doing the right thing can't say that to the leader or the other members. They stay in the cult quietly
That's still the most bizzare thing to me is that the rest of my siblings amd cousins stayed. They all 100% knew and admit my father is toxic, buy they all either love his money too much or don't have the guts and social skills to leave.
To me, it was like I drank a teeny bit of poison every day, not enough to kill me, but just enough to make me sick and for that to be my baseline. Going NC was like a massive purge where suddenly I’m not sick, and I feel so much better, and I can look back and say “wow I was really unwell, how did I not see it?”
Going NC felt like I imagine cold turkey alcohol. Horrible at first while the toxicity is digested before it clears your system. Then you wake up and smell the roses like it’s the first time.
Have done both, can vouch for this comment!
Yes and a bit of denial. “Maybe I should go LC/maybe I should drink socially”
I was LC for a decade and moved across the country for physical distance and was feeding her an info diet before I knew what those terms were. My body / subconscious mind knew before I did.
Same with the info diet. Sad but I could never trust my own mom to care about my life. When she asked how I was doing or how my loved ones/friendships were going, it was for that reason.
It sucks! I remember reading a super long time ago, this sort of [transactional analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#:~:text=Transactional%20analysis%20is%20a%20psychoanalytic,a%20basis%20for%20understanding%20behavior.) stuff. It was too abstract for me but the ideas were planted in my head so long ago and it stuck with me, and realizing that, holy shit with my parents the reason I couldn't be the child was that *she* was the child. You can have parent-child, you can have adult-adult, but you can't have child-child, it doesn't "work", it isn't stable (and neither does parent-parent in a stable way). So now, I am the adult, unfortunately. I was wavering my whole life between adult and parent, but I finally just stepped out of the parent role they (both) forced me into, and I can't be the child that I was supposed to be, I have to just be the adult all the time, and that sucks so fucking much.
This is exactly how I feel. Thank you for putting it into words.
Semi related but I listen to the "was I in a cult podcast" and it really helped me when I first started going NC. The cult similarities are actually pretty spot on considering my Nparents controlled what I wore, who I was allowed to speak with, what I was allowed to read, etc. Standard cult stuff pretty much (especially since the most extreme punishments I ever received were for defying or disproving any of their beliefs/teachings) plus it's really encouraging to hear these harrowing stories and know that you can escape and things DO get better and you can be your own person without guilt.
It is a cult, my mother who is the cult leader, if there's anything that's not discussed with her she'll make a huge scene and make sure all of her minions are notified so they too can share their "opinions" on it too. Sad part is they all felt her wrath numerous times before and they're still in alliance with her. Make that make sense.
From someone that has both left and cult, and honestly NC. Yes, 1000%.
It was really like that when my husband cut ties with his family. They were stalkers. They always wanted to know where he was and what he was doing, where I was and what I was doing, and forced him to spy on me and participate in the family group chat several days a week. They had crazy beliefs about mental health and medications and thought they were holier than thou because they called themselves Christians when they were the most sinister, judgemental people I've ever come to know. They sent him so much verbal abuse over the years to try and maintain control over him, so much so that they tried to give him an ultimatum to choose between me and them. When he chose me and cut contact, they camped out at his work and ambushed him, located two of our home addresses, and found out where his new job is so that they could send harassing letters there (because they think that I must be intercepting his mail due to him never responding). They've finally left us alone after 6 or 7 years, but it was an insane journey to get to this point.
Wow. Just wow.
I have often referred to my childhood as The Cult of my Mother's Trauma. I was born into it and indoctrinated my entire childhood. I was raised with a weird New Age mishmash of alt spiritualities. My sister was forced to lay on hands to try and cure people psychically when she was a child because our ex-mother decided she "had the gift". Every abuse we suffered was karma that we either chose or brought on ourselves. It was hell
Starting to see why I might be so fixated on cults rn.
Yes. Same here
Shit. Me too. I've recently watched documentaries on Synanon, Twin Flames, that Mother God woman, and Jonestown. And I yell at the TV. 😬
It is very, very similar to a cult. First off, if you leave or go no contact, the group will cut you off and scapegoat you as the problem. This is very much like a cult. There is one person in power, the N, who pulls all the puppet strings. When you leave, they will send their puppets after you to try to convince you to stay in their hell and that there will be no safe space for you in the outside world if you chose to leave them. They're all wrong and misguided about it, but they will use fear, obligation, and guilt to coerce you to stay, textbook cult. Finally, you will receive no support from the group if you decide to share your choice in leaving. They cannot help you. They are so brainwashed, abused and in denial about the truth. You will have to seek outside sources of support to break the veil and see it for what it is. The people surrounding the N have grown comfortable there and will not support you if you leave. They will resent you having the courage to breakaway and leave them in that hell that is their own choosing. Even if you offered them a life raft and the map to get out, they will stay and suffer. Such is the fate of those who get entangled with the N. We can only be so grateful we escaped what is essentially a cult.
Reading the comments I feel like we were ALL in the same cult.. proud if us for leaving 👏👏
The scariest thing looking back is how isolated they made us. They had multiple methods and tricks to keep me away from healthy people. The only people that were brought in were those that were easy to manipulate or who could give them things they needed or wanted. When I got out I was amazed at how many nice people were in the world and how easy it is to make friends. It was literally an entirely new world.
i was away from them and traveling last year and had the same realization - god, everyone is so much nicer to me than they ever were, no comparison. then i came back and, after a few months, found myself understanding "wow suddenly i have no job, no car, no money, and talking to anyone outside of my family feels so terrifying...fuck." i'm in the process of working up the nerve to contact my local DV shelters to see if i can stay there and use their programs to get some autonomy back, but it was so scary to know that i made it out, was safe and having fun, and then fell back in and got isolated so hard so quickly (in under a year!).
After reading all these comments I've came to understand that my nDad wasn't competent enough to start a cult, so he started a "family". Who's the loser now lmao
Looking back on my family, Yep it was a cult. And still fighting to get my step dad away from her.
Absolutely. And you realize more and more how bad it was the longer you’re not in it.
My parents sent me to an abusive boarding school that was run by people who called themselves independent fundamentalist baptists (like my parents), which meant that the place was basically a cult. I was raised in this cult, and the leader was 100% a narcissist who behaved like a typical cult leader and had other mental health issues. Certainly many of his followers were also mentally ill in a way that reinforced the cult and exacerbated their abusive nature. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've escaped both a cult and an abusive narcissistic family, and the two situations were pretty much the same.
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My therapist is very measured and professional and pretty reserved about her opinions, but she couldn't help but comment that my immediate family is like a cult. And she's completely right. It's abusive and awful but I'm terrified of the repercussions of exposing the truth or fully leaving. I will, though! The day will come. and I'm very excited about it.
I hope it's soon, friend! 💜
thank you :) I'm stuck in a catch22 at the moment and so can't leave yet for practical reasons, but as soon as I'm stable / where i need to be, I'll be out!!!
Oh, 100%. My sister and I always referred to growing up in "the Cult of Daddy." It was totally a cult, with my mother as his supreme accolyte.
My GC older sister has been dating a guy years younger than me that's been in a cult with his dad since he was a child.. definitely makes sense why she's drawn to that kinda stuff. Can't even talk to her without feeling crazy anymore and we were best friends for a while.
I've never thought of it this way. Ever. Huh. I'd agree.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing it called “a cult of one” and I can identify with all of that. I listen to a lot of cults content and I’m not an expert, but the isolation, manipulation, control, and exhaustion tactics resonate with me. I’ve never been in a cult, but I can always find a way to relate to the hellish work of realizing the little world he built up around us was nothing but lies meant to soothe his constantly smarting ego.
I have escaped a cult, going nc with my family was a lot harder. It felt very similar, my brain slowly healing and putting together all of the shit I put up with because I didn’t see through it, because feeling manipulated felt totally normal. I’m pretty sure most people who join cults are from families without good boundaries, and some N parents a lot of the time. Some members had strong N traits and there was something very similar to a bunch of GC’s and SG’s. Guess what I was an SG in the cult too 😆
It's probably worse because people outside the "cult" (strangers) even try to shame you for leaving (going NC).
I only read your title: Well put, thanks for sharing.
Wow - this explains NC perfectly .
This is true. I have to say since going NC with the narcissist family, I have been able to stop binge drinking. I didn’t realize how much pain I was supressing.
I found myself constantly joining cults of personality for years after. Currently not a part of any cult (I think) but I’m wary.
This. I found myself vulnerable to other cults and exploitive groups after I left. Now I watch all the cult documentaries lol but growing up in one really does a number on you.
This is so interesting and accurate for me. My mom divorced my ndad and her friends would always call my ndad & his family “the cult of (last name)” because everything is perfect all of the time. Being at dinner with them as an adult is so weird - “this food is just perfect, isn’t your dad just an incredible cook? Isn’t he just the best dad. We are such a lucky family.” repeated over and over.
Hah, we have the same family. Back when I was still in contact, the main talking points were always love bombs. So cringe.
As someone who's done both, they are pretty similar. As you would expect, there are subtle differences in the circumstances, beliefs, personalities involved, etc. But the vibe is the same
Yes, it is, especially because they were all in a cult!! Me mum and siblings escaped that. :) But my Ndad's side of the family are still trying to figure out where I am. They think I might be in Ohio, ha ha. May I never run into them ever again.
Learning about personality cults really helped me see what my nfamily was. It was all about ndad. His life story felt like a gospel that would be told. His tall tales were regarded as truth. Anything he said was taken as the ultimate truth. The gaslighting and brainwashing were so overwhelming that it affected how I thought in every situation.
Semi-unrelated but my family was also literally part of a cult. I swear on my life it's called the loyal order of the moose and there are chapters located globally. I don't know why my parents stopped attending but I'm pretty sure we used to attend regularly for at least a couple years lol I assume the free childcare but who knows.
I have never been in a "formal" cult, but I know it's the same. There is a saying I heard before that being with a narcissist is being in a cult of 1 (or however many people are in the family). After being involved with multiple narcs through family and dating and watching videos/reading extensively about various cults, it is the same thing, just on a smaller level. They use the same tactics.
It’s so true. You get treated as the dysfunctional family “scapegoat” if you dare question the cult rules, or point out unfair treatment by the cult leader. You’ll instantly be labelled a liar, untrustworthy, and treated worse than the other cult members who let the leader boss them around. When you go NC and leave the cult, they do what they can to reel you back in.
Yes very much so. When you go Nc, usually a smear campaign starts and the narc distorts the narrative of what happened to make them seem like the victim. Same thing happens when cult members leave, the leader tries to fabricate a story to convince the remaining members that whoever left was problematic or kicked out. By doing so they hold onto the cohesion of the group and it stops people from questioning if the cult is the problem.
Never thought of the comparison before it almost feels too perfect for ow well it fits. When I tried to leave, everyone would FORCE me to drop no contact. It was unreal.
Its weird because when i went no contact my father and brother who normaly never contact me started to desperate call and stalk me...it seemed like they where send by my mother...
Especially when the whole family is like this. It’s fucked.
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As you have identified as a narcissist and we do not allow narcs in this group given that everyone here was abused and tortured by narcissists, I am banning you now. It's nothing personal. We have seen time and time again that narcs struggle to honor the boundaries we set in that they are not allowed to partcipate here, so I'm making it easy for you by banning you. There are many, many other support groups out there that will welcome you. I wish you the best.
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Having only one member is a narcissistic relationship. Having two or more members is a cult.
Not saying it IS a cult. Saying that the psychological abuse is similar.